The chief executive and co-founder of collapsed energy company Bulb will leave at the end of July after continuing to earn a six-figure salary while the firm was propped up by billions in taxpayer loans.
Hayden Wood is leaving Britain’s seventh-largest energy supplier, which has around 1.5 million customers, as the government continues to look for a buyer to save Bulb.
He remained at the company after it went into “special administration” – the biggest casualty of the growing energy crisis – in November last year.
Bulb has been criticized for hanging on to Wood, who co-founded one of the UK’s best-known start-ups in east London in 2015, given that its £1.7bn bailout was the most the big taxpayer bailout following government interventions in Royal Bank of Scotland and HBOS in 2008.
Wood was criticized by MPs for continuing to receive a £250,000 taxpayer-funded salary while helping special administrators from Teneo find a buyer.
“CEO and co-founder of Bulb, Hayden Wood, is stepping down from the business,” the company said in a statement. “We wish him all the best for the future.”
Wood is not expected to receive compensation, according to the Financial Times.
When wholesale energy prices began to rise in early 2021, Bulb sought financing to shore up the business, followed by unsuccessful attempts to sell to an industry competitor.
In November, the company told the industry regulator it could no longer operate as a going concern, one of dozens of energy firms to go bankrupt due to a surge in energy prices.
At a parliamentary hearing in April, Wood apologized to MPs for “the way things went” with the company.
Sign up for the Business Today daily email or follow Guardian Business on Twitter at @BusinessDesk
Centrica, the owner of British Gas, withdrew from the process of potentially buying Bulb last month. UK rival Octopus Energy and Masdar, an Abu Dhabi energy company, remain candidates.
No replacement CEO has been appointed. Wood’s roles will be split between the rest of the executive team.
Bulb made a loss of £886m in the six months following nationalisation, according to administrators’ accounts published earlier this month. Dozens of creditors, many of them small businesses, are owed £585m and are unlikely to be repaid.
Add Comment